2/11/2015

BNFF Review: 'The Good Son'

Okay, kids, calm down. The
Good Son isn’t some Nordic remake of that 1990s thriller starring Macaulay Culkin as some sinister Damien. There are ample parallels between this Good Son and that Good Son, but this Finnish dramedy about a troubled teen takes a
far more successfully humorous approach to spoiled brats. (Arguments can be
made about the Culkin film, but comedy arguably isn’t among its intentions.)
This black comedy from Zaida Bergroth screens at Bright Nights: The
Baltic-Nordic Film Festival this Friday and it provides a spot-on example of
the current of dark humour rippling throughout the festival.

Moody humour like this inevitably falls under the
love-it-or-leave strain of moviegoing, but film buffs interested in a fun,
challenging, and unexpected character study are bound to find themselves enrapt
with the incisive character of The Good
Son. The film is a no-holds-barred satire of showbiz life and the senses of
privilege and entitlement that come with it as saucy leading lady Leila (Elina
Nilhtilä) buggers off from her own film premiere and retreats to the family
cottage with her two sons in tow. The controversy behind Leila’s latest gaffe
isn’t made entirely clear with The Good
Son’s jump into the family getaway. Leila is simply at a roadside diner
when a voyeur snaps a picture with his phone and hides behind a tabloid that teases
an embarrassing premiere for Leila and a train wreck of a performance in her
latest film.

Leila handles the intrusion relatively well for someone
looking to avoid detection at such an embarrassing time. A few cuss words and
that’s that, but then a young man slides into the booth with the amateur
paparazzo. The boy admires the new iPhone and then dunks it cheekily into the
man’s full glass of water. That boy is Ilmari (Samuli Niittymäki) and he simply
serves to protect his other, albeit in a misguided and somewhat obnoxiously
funny way. Boys will be boys.

But therein lays Ilamri’s problem: he’s well on his way to
being a full grown man, and he should know better that being a douchebag to
another douchebag doesn’t solve anything. It’s one of those “an eye for an eye
makes the whole world blind” lessons that Leila should have taught him ages
ago. Leila, however, isn’t really the parenting type—playing the mom seems to
be her least favourite role—and she treats Ilmari more as a
companion/intern/smoking buddy than as a son. It’s no wonder that he’s so
spoiled and testy.

There’s an elusive closeness to Leila and Ilmari’s
relationship, although it’s nothing of the Bates
Motel/Savage Grace variety no
matter how weirdly platonically sexual it seems. Things quickly go out of
control when Leila invites a bunch of her actor/arty friends up to the cottage
for a boozy weekend. It all seems wholly inappropriate for a weekend with one’s
kids (although it seems relatively harmless compared to the parties in Latvia’s
The Lesson) from the minute that Leila’s
friends pull up halfway in the bag already and sporting bottles of vino. One
reveler even rolls out of the back seat of a car stone cold drunk and buck
naked. He passes out on the front lawn, and Leila and company treat the arrival
as a perfectly ordinary party favour. It’s in this moment where everyone stands
around, happily ignoring the drunk party animal parked ass-up and intoxicated
on the ground that The Good Son
deftly brings its wicked sense of humour to light: things aren’t going to go
well at this party and everyone is far too blinded by their egos and
self-indulgence to realize the mess before their very eyes.

The party goes well-ish with Leila giving Ilmari the
motherly advice of knocking out one of the insufferable party guests with
double gin and tonics, but the clash of egos between Leila and her fellow actress
is nothing compared to the next round of party games. As the weekend
progresses, Leila strikes up a relationship with a writer named Aimo (Eero
Aho). She insists that it’s just sex, but Ilmari immediately acts as if he’s
threatened by this shift in his mother’s attention. Things spiral out of
control no sooner than one can say “Oedipus Rex.”

Director/co-writer Zaida Bergroth has lots of fun colliding
the overtones of Greek tragedy within the framework of a midsummer night’s sex
comedy. Anxiety looms at every turn as Ilmari and Aimo butt heads like two territorial
bucks. (It doesn’t help, either, that Ilmari’s summer fling, Karita, played by
Anna Paavilainen, is rumored to be the village bicycle and invites Aimo to take
a spin during a reprieve from one of the mother-son domestic squabbles.) The Good Son wracks up ample tension as
it layers one perversely droll scenario on top of another: summer love has
never been so awkward, and there’s an underlying wickedness to the grossly
incestuous vibe wafting in the air. Only Unto (Eetu Julin), Leila's youngest and most neglected son, seems
to have any innocence and perspective as he documents the weekend
through his camera and uses make-believe to escape from the palpably negative energy of the circus that Leila and Ilmari are brewing for their own misguided amusement. Bergroth and the cast, especially Nilhtilä
(who manages to be wholly sympathetic while Leila threatens to steal Betty
Draper’s title of “Mother of the Year”), handle it extremely well by putting
the audience’s discomfort with this wayward household at the centre of the
film’s comedic edge.

The mostly handheld cinematography adds a dynamic of
off-kilter edginess, and Bergroth gradually darkens the film aesthetically as
the tone of the humour becomes increasingly ominous. Laugh to release the
tension as The Good Son grows darker
as it delves deeper into absurdity and farce. The film unfolds with the pace of
a thriller even though it’s very much a comedy, and the eruption of that one
doesn’t see coming brings the film to an unexpected ending, if a tragically,
amusingly, and satisfyingly fitting one. The cocktail of unease and mirth, and
of tragedy and comedy, keeps the audience at a distance from getting a handle
on Ilmari’s violent instability until, like Leila, we see it coming far too
late.

Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)

The Good Son screens in Ottawa at Bright Nights on
Friday, Feb. 13
at 7:00 pm at the River Building Theatre, Carleton University.